The next Composer Spotlight of our upcoming collaborative concert with Front Porch features a new work by MCI composer Isaac Mayhew. Each of the five composers who will be featured in this event were asked to create a piece of music reflecting environmental issues within their respective local areas. Mayhew's piece Elegy for Uncommon Ground addresses the presence of climate change and its impact in the state of Minnesota:

Describe your inspiration for composing the piece.
The idea for that piece is to capture the experience of living through climate change on an everyday level. I live in Minnesota, in the center of the continent, where I'm not faced with the tangible effects on a day-to-day basis in the way that people elsewhere are. This is not to say that there aren't very real consequences to be felt. However, since we are talking about such a macro-concept, it can be hard to feel on a daily level - except for on social media, where there is still a raging debate about it.

What is the overall conception for the piece (for example, is it programmatic or abstract? Is there a specific formal structure, color, or musical device you employed?)
I was reading an online article about the ways in which my home state will feel the effects of climate change over the next thirty years, when I discovered the comments section. For this piece, each movement title is a Facebook comment, and within each movement, I tried to capture the both the tone and feeling behind the comment itself as well as my own experience of reading it.

What are some of the goals you strove to accomplish in writing the work?
​I wanted to capture the frustration of having a debate over widely greed upon facts and realities. I also wanted to mock the willful ignorance of climate change deniers.

What are some of the challenges you faced in writing the work?
​As I was writing the piece I found myself incorporating a lot of seemingly unrelated musical elements, and was having a hard time making them fit together. In the end, I decided to leave the piece a little rough around the edges because I think that gives it character and also works as an analogy for the chaos of our social media feeds.

Is there anything specific about your piece you'd like your audience to look out for?
​The second movement has some interesting things to listen for. I wanted to poke fun at the sort of "Baby Boomer Nostalgia" that I see as a major impediment to taking real action on climate change. The two main themes in this movement appear in the following places:

• Beginning to Letter A (pulled from the song La Bamba by Los Lobos)
• Letter B to Letter C (no quote in particular, but it supposed to sound like the music from Grease)

Both of these strike me as really nostalgic "Baby Boomer" music. Both sections are in 7/8 so that while the melodic and harmonic material make it really tempting to just sit back in the groove, the rhythmic framework repeatedly upsets that. The two themes are also interrupted by more serious, moody material. This is meant to portray the nostalgia that I was just describing as a way of avoiding the darker truth about what is really happening to the planet. From D to the end, the idea is that the moody "in-between" material takes over and is developed to its natural conclusion.

What do you hope your audience ultimately take away the most from hearing your work?
I would hope that listeners would be able to laugh at the humor in the piece but also make connections between the piece and their own lives. Despite this being about climate change specifically happening in Minnesota, this is a greater issue happening globally.

For you, as a composer, what has been the most beneficial and rewarding part of your collaborative process with Front Porch?
Front Porch is an exciting and upcoming music ensemble and it is an honor to have the opportunity to write for them. They have a very unique instrumentation that presents many possibilities. 

We are excited to begin sharing with you the Composer Spotlights for our collaborative concert with Front Porch! This event will be taking place on December 11, 2019 in Ann Arbor, Michigan and will feature world premieres of new music written by 5 of our MCI composers.

For this concert, each of the composers were asked to create a piece of music reflecting environmental issues within their respective local areas. MCI composer Conner Leigh Shaw's piece B00m and Bust addresses the issue of fracking at the height of the oil and gas industry within his home state of Colorado.

​Learn more about Conner's new piece below:

The next Composer Spotlight for our October 20th collaborative concert with the Holland Concert Jazz Orchestra features MCI composer Josh Trentadue and his new suite "Four Ethereal Planes." This piece will feature fellow MCI composer Kevin Day joining HCJO as guest artist on piano, keyboard synthesizer, and Hammond Organ.

Learn more about Trentadue's new work in the video below. A full transcript for this Spotlight (and MCI composer Janay Maisano's Spotlight) will be published in the coming weeks.

TICKETS: ​https://www.eventbrite.com/e/millennium-composers-initiative-concert-tickets-74454235623

We are excited to share with you the first Composer Spotlight for our October 20th collaborative concert with the Holland Concert Jazz Orchestra! Learn more about MCI composer Janay Maisano's work for this group entitled "Birdy Banter" in the video below. A full transcript for this Spotlight (and for MCI composer Josh Trentadue's Spotlight) will be published in the coming weeks.

TICKETS: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/millennium-composers-initiative-concert-tickets-74454235623

On Sunday, April 28th, the world premiere of MCI composer Duncan Petersen-Jones's new string quartet "Conflicting Emotions" will be given by the Converge String Quartet. The concert will be taking place at the University of Michigan.

Read on to learn more about the inspirations which drove the composer to create this new work:


­Describe your inspiration for composing the piece.
The inspiration for each of the three movements in this string quartet is of a different emotion.  The first movement is "Bewilderment", which is essentially about being overwhelmed, as if trying to take a breath of air and not being able to.  The second movement is "Isolating Loneliness", which is about being truly alone with the feeling the there is nobody you can rely on.  The third movement is "Rigid Egos", which is about egos that are so strong that they battle everything until it crashes at the end.

What are some of the challenges you faced in writing the work?
While there were several challenges I faced, I can't say any of them without spoiling the surprise of the piece.

Is there anything specific about your piece that you'd like your audience to look out for?
A music video is being made of this string quartet, so keep an eye out for it!

What do you hope your audience ultimately take away the most from hearing your work?
I hope people will get the feelings that this piece is trying to relay, and I hope that they not only enjoy the music, but also think more about the emotions that they feel from it.

This week will see the world premieres of two new compositions by MCI composer Daniel de Togni. "Sing Me Into Singing" will be premiered at the San Fransisco Conservatory of Music on Wednesday April 24th, while "Iterations: 4 Pieces for Narrator, Oboe, and Piano" will make its debut on Friday April 26th at the University of Central Arkansas. The latter piece, as well as another work by the composer titled "BEAT," will also be performed at Rad Sol 2019, a concert series founded by de Togni which aims to promote and perform concert music by composers in Arkansas.

We had the opportunity to speak with the composer about both of his new works. Read on to learn more about the inspirations that compelled him to create this new music:

Next week, on April 23rd, sees the debut of MCI composer Janay Maisano's original score for the student short film "Menage a Trois" at the University of Redlands. The score features a trio of musicians whose instrumentation consists of ukulele, alto saxophone, and piano. Maisano also served as conductor for the recording sessions of her music.

Read on to learn more about her process for creating this score: